Going beyond the CV with visumes

Job seekers who want to make an impression can go beyond just giving a resume in words on career portal STJobs.

They can produce video resumes, or "visumes" for the online portal, which is the only major Singapore career site hosting such a service.

Some job sites allow job seekers to link to video resumes which are, however, hosted elsewhere.

But at STJobs, they can upload their video resumes directly to the site, alongside the traditional text CV.

For privacy, the visumes can be viewed only by recruiters.

Explaining the new move, STJobs senior product manager Kee Ee Kheng said: "To help job seekers stand out from the crowd and employers make better decisions, STJobs introduced Visume to let applicants showcase their personalities and bring their resume to life."

In the short clip, a job seeker will tell the potential employer about his qualifications, why he wants the job and so on.

STJobs introduced visumes at its Career & Development 2013 Fair, where job seekers could also record their visumes on the spot. Almost 200 have been uploaded on the portal, including one by by Mr J. Wang, 26.

"Creating a visume... will give me an edge over other job seekers," he said.

Visumes appeared on the job scene in the 1980s, when they were on video cassettes. They took off again with the rise of the Internet.

But visumes are not without risks. A poorly-filmed visume could backfire and create a poor impression, said Adecco marketing manager Shirin Aziz.

For now, they are rare, even at recruitment firm font, which gets people for the creative industry, said its Asia director, Ms Karin Clarke. The traditional CVs remain key, said Ms Clarke and other experts.

But the visume, by giving an insight into the job seeker's personality, "can make the process of shortlisting candidates to invite for an interview more straightforward", said Kelly Services vice-president and country general manager Mark Hall.